Brooklyn’s Decades-Old Kellogg’s Diner Goes Bankrupt, Lists for $2.5 Million

Williamsburg’s decades-old Kellogg’s Diner is up for sale. The restaurant, a neon-lit fixture on the corner of Metropolitan and Union avenues for close to a century, was handed over to creditors in late January after filing for bankruptcy. The business recently appeared in a commercial real estate listing online with an asking price of $2.5 million.

The iconic restaurant, known for its late-night crowds and appearance in an episode of HBO’s Girls, will remain open during the sale, says Victor Moneypenny, a broker with MYC & Associates, the Staten Island real estate agency that’s executing the sale. The diner’s new owner will inherit its liquor license and a 30-year lease beginning on June 1, 2023, whose terms will be negotiated between the buyer and the landlord.

Open since 1928, Kellogg’s has become a pillar of after-hours eating in Brooklyn, a home for serviceable diner food where the busiest hours are often after 4 a.m. — when city bars are required to make last call. But behind the gleam of its stainless steel frame, court records show the restaurant was facing a darker reality, in which its owners had been struggling to make ends meet for years.

Irene Siderakis, the diner’s most recent owner, took over the business from its previous owner, her husband Chris Siderakis, who unexpectedly died in 2018. “I had no idea how to run a diner or if I could,” she told the New York Times in 2021. “I had to make a choice: sell the diner or learn the business on my own and show my boys we can do this and persevere.”

By August 2021, Kellogg’s owed creditors at least $750,000 in unpaid expenses, ranging from utility bills and legal fees from a 2019 federal wage theft lawsuit to almost $300,000 in unpaid rent, according to court records. That month, Siderakis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a financial option that allows businesses to remain open, sometimes under the same owners, in order to restructure and become profitable.

In a bid to turn things around, Siderakis adopted a try-anything approach at Kellogg’s. She hosted comedy shows and other community events in her dining room and turned the decades-old restaurant into an online brand, selling its food from 18 different names on delivery apps. According to the listing from MYC & Associates, the diner averages $3.5 million in annual sales.

Kellogg’s entered Chapter 7 bankruptcy on January 30, at which point it closed for three weeks and was handed over to creditors. The business reopened on February 20 with a “grand opening” sign that waved in the wind out front, an unusual sight for a century-old diner that prompted at least one TikTok user to weigh in. “Not the ‘good soup’ dinner [sic] from hbo girls pretending to have their third grand opening this year,” they wrote.

A bankruptcy trustee is overseeing operations at the restaurant until Kellogg’s is sold. As part of the February reopening, they scrapped the restaurant’s longstanding 24/7 hours for dine-in service. Kellogg’s now closes on weekends from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., an employee at the restaurant confirmed by phone. The business is open for takeout and delivery during that time.